The invention resides in an aerosol separator by which dust and droplet aerosols can generally be removed from gases and can particularly be removed in gas purification plants.
Such apparatus have a very wide field of uses where warm and humid gases are generated from stationary and mobile sources such as motor vehicles, ships, power plants, heating plants, waste combustion plants, fossil fuel plants and chemical plants, etc.
A plant with electrostatic equipment for cleaning gases carrying liquid or solid particles is known from DE 101 32 582. This plant includes three sections:
An ionization and main purification section for the water-saturated raw gas from a space charge zone following the device for the ionization of the contamination particles,
an auxiliary cleaning section comprising a zone of grounded hollow electrodes, and
a final filter arrangement for the fine purification of the gas after which the purified gas is released to the environment.
The particles are ionized in corona discharge. Particles separated in the three zones are collected, cleaned and again returned to the gas cleaning process. The coolant heated during passing through the spaces between the tubes can be used for heating the blocking gases for the isolation of the support structures and, as a result, of the high voltage penetrations.
It is the object of the present invention to separate liquid and solid coarse and fine particles, without the normally required high differential pressure from gases, with a separation efficiency >90%, and to continuously discharge them.